Conditioning

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Human emotion is predictable.It is so becasue the mind is so.However complex and dense it will behave the way it is supposed to.Conditioning though not percievable is persistent.Enforcing itself on free will it is a disease,a plague for the mind.A part gets conditioned,this spreads itself to the other areas forcing free will to bend itself subduing it.Its consequences though are higly predictable so the principle of unconditioning arises.But why be conditioned.The premise of free will and choice is broken by this plague.Predictable as we are we always follow the same path.Sorrow leads to gloom which leads to dark inner motivations.Here the mind will not see light because it is conditioned to live in sorrow ever growing.
Love leads to joy,excitment but this word love is not so unique.What is so special about it when you know it can evaporate like the mist.Like a fog it clouds the five senses,makes the seer blind,engulfs emotion to neglect true desire the "selfish desire".
Why give when the reciever will not accept.Why recieve when the giver is not perfect.To foll in love is folly,to be blown away is even greater folly.Root your self firmly lest you be blown away by a gust of emotional wind and spend your life in an cold dark emotional winter.
What is choice when choice itself means nothing?Everything is futile.Life is meaningless.If we do find meaning we are lost in the search or blown away by what we find!
If your choice leads to conditioning it is futile.Choose wisely or do not choose.Stay awake lest you be robbed of all that you have.
Love is a plague.It is false.Love only yourself.Be satisfied only by satisfying yourself.Give to those who have nothing.Love those who have never been loved and then let the plague spread.It is contagious.So let it contaminate other but be vaccinated yourself.Close yourself in a shell of power.Personal Power.Let it be so powerfull that nothing breaks through.
Life is pointless.Give it direction.Rise but do not look ahead.The future is as meaningless as existence.Be not fooled lest you fool yourself.

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@Lordie,

Some interesting concepts - but do you think love is a choice?

Because I was thinking just today how much easier life would be, really, if we could all maintain that emotional detachment of which you speak.

The reason it occurred to me, is that I saw my dog struggling to rise on her hind legs and thought to myself, 'She's getting older. What will I do when she dies?'
I will be devastated and thrown into that dark tunnel of which you speak - blown away- yes, that's a good way to describe it.

And that's just for my dog.

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@aidan,

I think it doesn't have to be that way.
In grief lies the intensity of the emotion, love.
I can be grateful to feel such love as grief.
Carpe Diem

1 Reply

@wayne,

I wish I could view or feel it so philosophically.
In reality though, I find grief almost unbearable.

Yes, I guess the degree of grief is representative of the amount someone loved another, but the grief itself feels like a constant reminder that that person is gone from your life, moreso than how very much you loved them.

I'd like to find a way to love someone emphatically and totally but then not feel their loss so emphatically and totally when they leave - through death.
At least not every single moment of every single day.

That's why I can (intellectually) see the value in some of the opening poster's points.
Not that I think I'd ever be capable of the self-protective attitude and methods he advocates.

And maybe it's unreasonable or selfish. But I wish it was possible.

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@aidan,

I understand how you feel. I guess I've been blessed with the ability to feel as I do.
I can't say that I had much to do with it. It was a gift that I received through a very spiritual person many years ago.
More recently, when my parents died, I was grateful for the lesson.

There is a song, by Dream Theater, called through her eyes thats worth a listen. You can find it on u-tube if you're interested.

1 Reply

@aidan,

Love is surely a choice.We choose to build up love and we choose to keep the way it is being blind to our own needs.Why care when there is imperfection all around?Why love itself when human love is imperfect.Detach and spectate.Dont bend free will for it all that man has.

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@wayne,

I listened to it Wayne. Like the melody and piano. Thank you.

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@Lordie,

Okay, then I'll put it like this:
Is the ability or urge to either attach or detach an actual choice?

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Things unseen, my mind foresaw,
A rosy dream with love all around,
My heart has fallen to the ground,
Its beat makes no sound.

Why did you look into the future?
Why did you love?
Why did you let yourself be bluffed.

Darkness shrouds and gloom spreads,
the future is no more seen!
but why did i look at it,
when it never could have been!

Fantasy took flight,
everything looked so bright,
It happened,
Now i am shattered.

Friend let a lesson be learnt tonight,
Love has a ferocious bite,
Its wounds never heal,
It is a very very rough deal!

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@aidan,

Yes!You choose to stay detached and you choose to attach!Pure free will.What happens as a result of attachment is not free will.It is a mix of both emotional turmoil and the plague of conditioning which reduces the choice worthless.

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@Lordie,

But don't you think individual temperament plays a part in whether or not one's free will is stronger than one's urge to attach?

For instance, I was very interested in doing foster care, and went to the classes and everything else to prepare myself to do it. But during the personal interview phase, I was told that I was not the sort of person who could comfortably or easily stay detached enough to be an effective foster parent.
The term person used, and I'll always remember this, was, 'You could attach to a door knob.'

And I'm only using myself and my own circumstances as an example, but I do think it's true for most other people- if a person is loved and cared for by a caregiver- their instinct is to attach.
It's not a choice - it's an instinct.
Attachment in different from attraction. But honestly, I don't even think attraction is a choice.

1 Reply

@aidan,

We are conditioned to love those who love us!About instincts yes i agree that due to this pre conditioning i would automatically attach myself to the person who gives me care,attention and affection.But what is important here is not to let yourself be taken for granted.When i spoke about "selfish desire" what i mean to say that protection of your own identity is extremely important.To let yourself be changed from your true self to suit the needs of others is personally according to me going against the laws of nature.
Hinduism talks about the "detached spectator" the true path to achieving Nirvana and breaking the circle of Karma.
Attraction is more instinct driven i agree.But to dwell on attraction is a choice.

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In this body, afflicted with desire, anger, greed, delusion, fear, despondency, envy, being apart from what one likes and being with what one does not like, hunger, thirst, old age, death, disease, grief and so on, what is the use of indulging in desires?

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The infinite proceeds from infinite. Then through knowledge, realizing the infinitude of the infinite, it remains as infinite alone.
Whoever knows knowledge and ignorance
Both of them, together
By ignorance crosses over death
And by knowledge reaches immortality.

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@Lordie,

No offense, but the OP rambles quite a bit. It assumes that free will exists and that conditioning is its opposite or nemesis. Determinism would be the nemesis of free will, not conditioning. There are also other variations on the free will vs determinism theme, so it's not all black-and-white as the OP seems to suggest.

As far as I can tell, free will is a concept based on a sense of agency produced by the brain's proprioceptive network. This sense, however useful for survival, has not been shown to have, under close analysis, an actual referent.

Here are a couple of abstracts that may help clarify: http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v11/n5/abs/nn.2112.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19837100

This would also help, but it's pretty tough to work through, for me, anyway:

http://home.uchicago.edu/decety/publications/Ruby_DecetyNN01.pdf

1 Reply

@FBM,

Appreciate the links...thanks !

1 Reply

@Fil Albuquerque,

No sweat. Fascinating stuff, innit?

0 Replies

@Lordie,

David Bohm, who wrote "thought as a system", a book you may be interested in, would argue that the only way we can become free of our "conditioning", which includes the conditioning of the way we think about various things and the way we respond to the events in our lives, we must cultivate what he calls "Proprioception of thought", which will allow us to observe the thought process, rather than trying to act on it in any way, by trying to suppress it etc.

I think your right when you say how people tend to "follow the same path", inasmuch as people who do not reflect on their own thought processes will always be lead by them, and consequently will not be free from their habitual thought processes. Bohm talks about what he calls "reflexes", which are thought processes which have become deeply engrained into the "system", effecting the chemistry of the brain.

if we can engage in a "dialogue" with our own thought process, then we can begin to identify those reflexes, which have been operating "under the radar" without full conscious awareness.

People can become so deeply enmeshed in particular ways of thinking, that the structure of their own thought processes become obscure to them. The interpretive aspect of thought, once its become habitual and regular, seems to become obscured within the process. Thought is somewhat similar to any activity that one repeats on a regular basis; if someone repeats a physical activity over and over again, it may initially require conscious thought and effort, but after a short while, the muscles become familiar with the movements, and it becomes automatic, and less conscious thought is needed to perform the action. The same thing applies in the activity of thought, in that if one repeats a thought process over and over again, the conscious awareness of that thought process gradually diminishes, until the structure and process of thought is no longer in conscious awareness, but has become habitual, and automatic.

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@Lordie,

Memory can also act as thought, in that our memory can impose itself onto a current situation without us realising it, and consequently we can misinterpret an ambiguous situation, because it has automatically given rise to a memory in our thought, which we take to be the correct interpretation of that moment.

Indeed, some people don’t even register that they just interpreted anything at all, rather they simply believe that their thought is just telling them what’s “out there” and they don’t see thought and memory as participating in any way.

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@Lordie,

Lordie wrote:

Human emotion is predictable.It is so becasue the mind is so.However complex and dense it will behave the way it is supposed to.Conditioning though not percievable is persistent.Enforcing itself on free will it is a disease,a plague for the mind.A part gets conditioned,this spreads itself to the other areas forcing free will to bend itself subduing it.Its consequences though are higly predictable so the principle of unconditioning arises.But why be conditioned.The premise of free will and choice is broken by this plague.Predictable as we are we always follow the same path.Sorrow leads to gloom which leads to dark inner motivations.Here the mind will not see light because it is conditioned to live in sorrow ever growing.
Love leads to joy,excitment but this word love is not so unique.What is so special about it when you know it can evaporate like the mist.Like a fog it clouds the five senses,makes the seer blind,engulfs emotion to neglect true desire the "selfish desire".
Why give when the reciever will not accept.Why recieve when the giver is not perfect.To foll in love is folly,to be blown away is even greater folly.Root your self firmly lest you be blown away by a gust of emotional wind and spend your life in an cold dark emotional winter.
What is choice when choice itself means nothing?Everything is futile.Life is meaningless.If we do find meaning we are lost in the search or blown away by what we find!
If your choice leads to conditioning it is futile.Choose wisely or do not choose.Stay awake lest you be robbed of all that you have.
Love is a plague.It is false.Love only yourself.Be satisfied only by satisfying yourself.Give to those who have nothing.Love those who have never been loved and then let the plague spread.It is contagious.So let it contaminate other but be vaccinated yourself.Close yourself in a shell of power.Personal Power.Let it be so powerfull that nothing breaks through.
Life is pointless.Give it direction.Rise but do not look ahead.The future is as meaningless as existence.Be not fooled lest you fool yourself.

Maybe you should see some professional, this reminds me of skitzo ramblings. You see things very ridgid and narrowly. You apply weird narrow assumptions to very complex matters.

You are lost in a emotional chaos of storms, and has no sense of direction to steer clear of the reefs.

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Conditioning

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